Day one of our short four day trip to Tokyo, Japan. It's my first time visiting Japan :) I was very excited.
Taipei International Airport - ready to fly out!
On the plane (JAL)
Up in the air~
Veggie Meal!! - It's honestly one of the best veggie meals on plane I've had. I finished it so fast and actually felt like having more.
Sweet and sour veggie meat and noodles
View of Tokyo
Landing at airport
Tokyo International Airport
It took a while for us to figure out where to go and where to buy tickets but it wasn't too awful, most of the time we just followed where everyone else was heading and the signs were pretty clear too.
There are tons of different trains which could get confusing but as long as you know where you are and where you're going, you should be able to figure out what tickets to buy from the map.
Train map/machine
Train tickets
Taking the Keikyo line out of the airport that also connects to the Yamanote Line(or the colour green line) which takes us to our hotel and most of the places we want to visit.
Keikyo line
Inside train
This is where we got off to transfer (sign of all lines)
Yamanote Line
We got off at the right station but it took us a while to locate our hotel. We were disoriented, didn't know which street to turn or which direction to go. I asked a couple random store people for help but they either couldn't communicate properly with me in English or were to busy to figure out the map I showed them. Finally a very nice pastry shop lady pointed us in the right direction :)
Hotel New Green - My brother booked this online for me. It's one of those business hotels mostly occupied by male business travelers.
Hotel room
Hotel window view
Hotel bed - when you book online, it usually gives you the dimensions of the bed. This bed just barely fitted the two of us.
My sister-in-law who studied and lived in Japan for many years helped us to write down some useful phrases in Japanese for getting vegetarian food and also some other general stuff like asking for some water or tea at the restaurant. The pictures I uploaded should be big enough for print outs. If anyone needs any more help in Japanese regarding vegetarian stuff traveling in Japan, let me know and I will see if my sister-in-law can help out.
Notes
Add-ons (this is for the Udon restaurant below)
After unloading our stuff at the hotel, we were both pretty hungry. Hanamaru Udon is one of the big chain udon restaurants in Japan that my bro and sister-in-law went to a lot. There was one a couple blocks away from our hotel.
Hanamaru Udon Restaurant
How it works is you go to the counter, order the udon you want and pick the sides you want. There are a bunch of different types of udon you can pick from, but I think most of them are non-vegetarian. There are also a lot of deep fried veggie tempura on the side you can get, and rice balls and egg as well. For the udon, you can pick one portion or more, I think one is a good amount and 2 is A LOT. The food price here is considered pretty cheap too.
Like any other restaurants we went to in Japan, we pretty much just walk up to the counter, and show the people the notes and wait for their responses :P It worked out pretty well.
Inside
Free add-ons
Plain udon with an egg
We got some veggie tempura, and a rice ball (lots of rice balls for vegetarian, and u can get them at any of convenient stores there. I love rice balls! The common vegetarian ones are seaweed, plum, and natto)
